Lying for the Union

When the SNP began rising to prominence in Scottish politics a very strange thing happened – Labour and Tories realised they quite liked each other really, to the extent of forming coalition administrations on some local authorities just to keep the SNP (majority party) out of power. It’s still happening.

Following the council elections earlier this month Labour in Scotland got itself into a bit of a tizzy due to its councillors in Aberdeen agreeing to go into coalition with the Tories . . . and then being suspended by the party. Because it doesn’t look good for Labour to be slagging off Mrs May and her gang on one level while jumping into bed with them in Scotland’s third city.

It reminds us that the ‘fight’ between Conservatives and Labour is often a very contrived affair, especially when constitutional issues are introduced. Tories and Labour stood shoulder to shoulder in the 2014 independence referendum and told the same lies. Labour paid the price for that in Scotland with certain sections of the electorate deserting the party, and Labour is now losing support from a different element which realises that if they wish to maintain the Union then they should put aside all other differences to back the Conservative and Unionist Party.

I’ve headed this section ‘Turf Wars’ because in some respects Labour and Tories can be viewed as two gangs fighting over a turf (Britain) in order to protect their rackets: riding the gravy train, promoting and aggrandising themselves and their friends, and of course reaping the rewards in peerages and consultancies/directorships on leaving office, if not before. The introduction of the threat from a third party, especially one offering radical change, makes them realise that they have more in common than they had previously wanted to admit.

On a practical level, it results in people belonging to either of these parties happier to see the other party win than have the outsider, the threat, succeed. Which gives us the reason for Labour’s current tribulations in Aberdeen. And many in Labour are quite open about preferring to see the Tories win, as this snippet from Labour Uncut reminds us.

But how far might this cynical co-operation between Labour and the Tories go? Could it happen in Wales?

Going back to the recent council elections, there might have been some jiggery-pokery in Neath Port Talbot. The Labour Party there was going through a difficult time, with many de-selections resulting in former Labour councillors standing as Independents, and to add to Labour’s woes there was a stronger than usual threat from Plaid Cymru.

All of which might explain the arrival of the cavalry in the form of unknown Conservative candidates, who seemed to do little or no canvassing, and most of whom didn’t bother to turn up at the count. What they did achieve in a number of wards was to split the anti-Labour vote and ensure a Labour victory. Some tell me there were paper candidates like these in other areas.

Then there was the Llangennech school dispute where people close to the Labour Party were more than happy to link up with UKIP in order to attack the Welsh language – ‘education’ and ‘choice’ being mere fig leaves. You might argue this was not strictly political, but Labour used the dispute, now being supported by UKIP, to attack Plaid Cymru. So we see a similar pattern at work.

And going back to my previous post, the people behind that obnoxious leaflet had a clear objective, which was to cause maximum damage to Plaid Cymru and hopefully loosen Plaid’s control on Gwynedd council. I mentioned that the leaflets had been seen in Blaenau Ffestiniog (in the Co-op store, to be exact), perhaps I should also have told you that in the Diffwys and Maenofferen ward of the town the Plaid Cymru candidate lost by just 3 votes.

With a margin that small it’s reasonable to assume that the leaflet was decisive.

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MEDIA

One reason that Tories and Labour are allowed to get away with such practices is of course because, by and large, the UK media is on the same wavelength, even otherwise liberal outlets tend to line up with them when ‘ugly nationalism’ is introduced to the mix.

A case in point would be the BBC, which still wields incredible influence due to so many people relying on it for their news. People trust the BBC, but that trust is often abused. Because I am in no doubt that the BBC has done a deal with the Conservative Party to follow the required line on most issues in return for keeping the licence fee that guarantees its survival. Though on Scottish independence, for example, the Beeb might not need to be leaned on.

One recent example of the Corporation’s Unionist credentials was the televised Scottish party leaders debate on Sunday when, to believe most of the media, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was floored by a nurse who claimed she had to use food banks. Here’s a more balanced view of that new low which exposed the BBC for the state propaganda agency it is, and always has been.

The Scottish nurse, Claire Austin, who attacked Nicola Sturgeon during a live TV debate, claiming that because of low pay she had to use food banks, photographed earlier this year dining at the Plaza Hotel in New York. She lives in a nice part of Edinburgh, dines at the best restaurants, her daughter attends a fee-paying school and has a horse. Oh, yes, and nurses in Scotland get paid more than their counterparts in Wales. Did the BBC put her up to it? (Picture courtesy of the Scottish Sun.)

And the BBC also proves what I said earlier about liberal outlets. For within the Corporation certain programmes – often with small, left of centre audiences – are allowed to stray from the official line in the hope of maintaining the image of impartiality. Newsnight, for example, supported Remain, Clinton, anybody but Le Pen, etc, yet when it comes to discussing the SNP or Scotland Newsnight could have Nigel Farage as its producer.

With all the previously separate websites now merged into WalesOnline, and controlled from Cardiff.

Trinity Mirror supports the Labour party. And with the BBC supporting any party that can maintain the Union the combination of Trinity Mirror and the BBC goes quite some way to explaining why a party as utterly useless as ‘Welsh’ Labour can hang on to power.

But Trinity Mirror’s loyalty to the Labour Party can take many forms, much of it distasteful. Further details on one such case were brought to my attention just a few days ago.

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JENNY LEE CLARKE

You will recall the case of the Swansea East Labour MP Carolyn Harris’s attack on a co-worker in the constituency office of Harris’s predecessor Siân James. It made the London dailies. No charges resulted only because the complaint was made beyond the six-month limit for charges of common assault.

As might be expected, when Harris became MP for Swansea East in May 2015 things got very difficult for the woman she had assaulted, Jenny Lee Clarke, who was still working in the constituency office. It was no surprise when Harris – once ‘cleared’ – took her revenge by accusing Clarke of theft. Equally unsurprising was the fact that WalesOnline gleefully reported the baseless accusation.

Ms Clarke lost her job and was put through the mill. Here’s her timetable of events:

17.02.17 – Still on bail whilst case went to CPS for a charging decision

17.05.17 – No action taken and released with no bail conditions because process had not been adhered too

When Ms Clarke attended Swansea Central police station on May 17th she was told that she was being released with no charge . . . but was also told, “You may in future be asked to attend voluntarily to be re-interviewed”. Though an apology was made “for the length of time this has taken”.

It has been suggested to me that this nightmare only ended when it did because of the ‘no extension of bail without fresh evidence’ provision in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, brought in due to the constant re-bailing in the Cliff Richard fiasco.

As we’ve seen, the Labour-supporting Trinity Mirror Group was quick to exonerate the Labour MP and equally quick to put the boot into her victim. Though, fair play, Richard Youle, senior news reporter for the Evening Post did promise to report the outcome of the investigation, as the e-mail reproduced below tells us.

The problem is that despite being told of the outcome, and reminded of his promise, Mr Youle and Trinity Mirror seem to have lost interest in the case. I wonder why?

Labour supporters reading this – and I do get them! – will be shouting, ‘Trinity Mirror’s reluctance to report the Jenny Lee Clarke case has got nothing to do with saving Labour embarrassment, Jac, cos Carolyn Harris is safe in Swansea East’. And indeed she is, bless her . . . but the Post covers the Bay and Carmarthenshire, so what about another Swansea seat, Gower, where Labour is hoping to overcome Byron Davies’s majority of just 27? And then there’s Llanelli, where you wouldn’t bet your house on Nia Griffith being returned.

This is a case that again exposes the links between the Labour Party and Trinity Mirror, and how they are prepared to combine in destroying anyone who threatens them. For Jenny Lee Clarke is now heavily in debt, she has lost her car, her telephone has been disconnected, and – unlike the stooge-nurse in Edinburgh – Jenny really is using food banks.

And what of South Wales Police? Their role in this does their reputation no favours. I hope there’s no connection between their treatment of an innocent woman and the fact that the PCC for South Wales Police is the odious Alun Michael, former Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth who, once elected, stuffed his office with Labour apparatchiks in the time-honoured way.

Having said that the Evening Post and WalesOnline couldn’t find space to tell us that Jenny Lee Clarke was not going to be prosecuted, Trinity Mirror still found space to insult our intelligence with a truly ludicrous story about how Harris had been affected by the Manchester bombing.

Courtesy of WalesOnline

Of course, she was nowhere near Manchester on Monday night, but she had been in Westminster for that attack in March – but she was never in any danger there either. While we expect politicians to exploit tragedies for their own advantage this is still one of the more contrived and disgusting examples I’ve come across.

But it’s what happens when you have a country where the dominant political party enjoys an unhealthy relationship with the company controlling most of the indigenous print media.

Anyone considering a ‘progressive alliance’ with these bastards needs a good talking to, with the kind of implement we shall encounter in the next section.

There is nothing ‘progressive’about the Labour Party.

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STOP PRESS!

I am informed by the legendary Ian Bone, founder of Class War, that on Sunday July 16th there is to be a ‘Dress Like Leon Atkin Day’ in Swansea. The message went on, “There will be a perambulation from Jimmy Wilde’s to St Paul’s Crypt followed by speechifying and singing”. For those now staring at the screen in bewilderment, let me explain.

Leon Atkin was a man of the cloth who used to give shelter to vagrants in the crypt of his church (now a curry house), which stood on the junction of St Helen’s Road and St Helen’s Avenue, opposite the legendary Joe’s ice cream parlour. The Jimmy Wilde referred to was not that Jimmy Wilde, but the old heavyweight boxer, who’d briefly been Welsh champion until losing his title to Tommy Farr. And he had even known the immortal Marciano who, as everyone knows, started his fight career in Swansea.

By the time I knew Jimmy he looked what he was, a beaten-up old heavyweight straight out of central casting, but you knew not to mess with him. He ran a drinking club not far from High Street Station. To describe Jimmy’s place as ‘rough’ would be an understatement on a par with saying Leo Messi’s a pretty good footballer.

Image reproduced courtesy of Google

You must remember that back then the pubs closed in the afternoon so, unless you knew a friendly landlord – or landlady! – if you wanted a drink you had to go to a club. Don’t get me wrong, there were some very tidy clubs, but these tended to be more discriminating than Jimmy about who they served. They expected you to be able to stand upright without swaying, or it would be some other irritating qualification.

Even so, you couldn’t always walk straight into Jimmy’s, there was often a certain film noir element to gaining admittance. For example, you’d knock on the door and a voice from within would ask, ‘Are you a member?’ You’d answer ‘No’, and the voice would come back, ‘Oh, never mind’, and the door would open. It was a strange ritual that served no real purpose.

The link between Jimmy Wilde’s and St Paul’s was of course that many of Jimmy’s customers made a regular perambulation to the Crypt. It might be worth adding that Leon Atkin was a drinker himself, in fact, he’d sunk a few pints with Dylan.

Back in the ’70s Ian and his crew did fantastic work with their underground magazine Alarm, exposing the corruption on Swansea council. Labour Council leader Gerald Murphy eventually got sent down, and then his Ratepayer successor Sid Jenkins got done for accepting ‘favours’. As we used to say – ‘Swansea’s got the best councillors money can buy’.

I recall one night in 1980 drinking with Phil Henry in the Queens on Oxford Street (run then by the Necrews family). Ian Bone was there selling ‘Paul Ringer is Innocent’ badges. The story as I remember it was . . . he’d pissed off some local heavies who’d bent an iron bar over his head, so with the compensation money he bought himself a badge-making machine!

Happy days with unbelievable characters. When did people become so boring?

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24 thoughts on “Lying for the Union”

Big Gee

Ah, you mean the heavyweight, ‘JIM’ Wilde from Abertawe, not the ‘JIMMY’ Wilde who was born in Quakers Yard, but is generally known as the ‘Tylorstown Terror’ as he moved there with his parents when he was about 12. Amongst his other nicknames were ‘The Mighty Atom, and ‘The Ghost With a Hammer in His Hand’. He is often regarded as the greatest British fighter of all time. He was the first official World Flyweight Champion and was rated by American boxing writer Nat Fleischer, as well as many other professionals and fans, as “the Greatest Flyweight Boxer Ever”. JIMMY Wilde had a record of 139 wins, 3 losses, 1 draw and 5 no-contests, with 99 wins by knockout.

On retiring Jimmy went to live in Cadaxton. Like many boxers he died in poverty, having got involved in various business ventures that lost him money. In 1965 some BASTARD on Cardiff station mugged him – he was seventy two at the time. He never recovered properly and died in 1969.

Old Jim wasn’t in that class as a boxer, but possibly a more colourful character than ‘Jimmy’ Wilde outside the ring.

Anyway . . . . back to politics . . . . here’s a bit more info on the ‘red headed food bank nurse’ and the blatant British Bullshit Corporation’s biased views on Nationalism in the UK: Click HERE

That’s a good piece on the food bank nurse. It looks like BBC Scotland is even worse than BBC Wales, but thankfully there are plenty of excellent blogs up there, plus the National daily newspaper and magazines.

Said my piece yesterday about the shallow nature of politicians, but it was reinforced last night when I switched on the box and caught parts of BBC Wales’ circus in Maesteg and S4C’s similar offering, also from Maesteg. Maesteg had better watch out as it could get a bad name for hobnobbing with ambiguous/duplicious politicians and media types.

Both programmes were slag-fests, unruly ranting back and fore with no serious attempts to drill down into the real issues by either the audiences or the politicians. In particular, bloody Hamilton got away with looking like a near saint simply because the audience was full of gibbering idiots who ranted and raved dragging the debate down to a level at which he flourishes.

Both events served to reinforce the belief that the BBC has no interest in informing and sponsoring open debate and was much in line with the food bank nurse scam of a few days ago. They certainly have it in for the SNP although finding out Sarah Smith’s pedigree did nothing for the Beeb’s credibility either and confirms that nepotism is alive and well at the Corporation.

Glad that you’ve mentioned the dear old BBC and political bias Jac. I mentioned in a comment to one of your previous posts that I attended a ‘meet the Governors’ evening in Cardiff a few years ago and watched that fool Michael Grade – the Chair of the Governors – insult Welsh people, defend the offensive Ann Robinson, not know the name of the Governor for Wales and introduce that twat from Cardiff University Richard Tait as an ’eminent’ academic – Richard Tait’s broadcasting achievement being the lame 70s programme ‘Nationwide’ which made stars of Frank Bough and Michael Barrett. What I didn’t mention was that in the mid 80s my mate worked as box office manager at the Edinburgh Festival and shortly before the Festival opened she received a rude demanding letter from a Samuel Brittan, a journalist on the FT, demanding tickets and accommodation. She wrote back explaining that there were no tickets or accommodation left and apologised for not being able to help him. All hell broke loose. Within days she was pulled up by a bigwig and shown an exchange of letters. Samuel Brittan had sent a copy of my mates letter to a Michael Grade, fuming. Michael Grade had written back to Samuel, expressing horror that my mate hadn’t pulled strings for Samuel, telling Samuel that he would make sure that Samuel definitely got a ticket even if it meant that Grade had to give Samuel his own ticket. My mate was told that Samuel was a Very Important Man and had to be accommodated. Samuel was of course the brother of Leon Brittan the Home Secretary under Thatcher. Weeks after my mate was given a bollocking, Grade was put in control of Channel 4. Grade of course later became Chair of the BBC where everyone boasted of his ‘charisma’, ‘energy’ and ‘independence’. He is now in the House of Lords and ‘came out’ as a Tory. He’s been toadying to them for years, that is why he was given all those ‘independent’ influential positions. (By the way, Leon Brittan was linked with concealing serious abuses at the North Wales Hospital, which in turn was concealing the north Wales paedophile ring. I have blogged about this in detail on my own site. Brittan has of course been constantly dogged by allegations that he was personally involved in child abuse.) Furthermore, something very odd has been happening on the Radio 4 Today programme, which used to be a little bit liberal. Journalists thought to sympathetic to liberal values are disappearing but Nick Robinson has arrived. Robinson was a leading light in the student Conservative movement when he was at university. However Robinson does at least have a brain – what is a real mystery is the recent appointment of Sarah Sands as the editor of Today. Sands is a total dipstick who until recently was thought to be finished, having been forced to take a job on the Reader’s Digest after being kicked out of everywhere else. Her stock in trade is vacuous nonsense aimed at ‘women’, centring around fashion, ‘juggling’, and the other middle class traumas that great swathes of daft female journalists who write for things like the Telegraph and Mail concern themselves with. How the hell was she ever appointed editor of Today? But there are many mysteries at the BBC – why was Frank Bough sacked for his past-times involving cocaine and prostitutes, which involved consenting adults, yet dear old Savile was accommodated? Could it be because Savile was a friend of Thatcher as well as of a number of influential senior civil servants who landed him the job on Broadmoor’s management committee? Savile of course molested patients at Broadmoor as well as at various NHS hospitals but because everyone believes that Broadmooor patients were all murderers (not true – the female patients there were usually women who had experienced terrible sexual violence and kept trying to injure or kill themselves) no-one gave a stuff. There was other less lurid wrongdoing at the BBC as well – another friend of mine worked in the commissioning dept in the late 80s and he left because of the corruption in the commissioning dept – all the contracts going to friends of people in the BBC. Then more recently there was Alan Yentob, BBC Big Beast and a senior figure in the con that was Kids Company, a favourite charity of David Cameron’s… I have heard that Yentob has now been banned from being a company director. The BBC haven’t been broadcasting that bit of news.

drsally, you are like a new mine with a good percentage of high grade ore oozing out of it !! But do me a favour, chop it up a bit into paragraphs as it can become a bit of a blur despite the intense interest. I know it’s tough, I sometimes churn out long paras even when I’m scribbling stuff nowhere near as informative as your gems. Thanks in anticipation.

“A REVIEW OF HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS Housing associations are accountable neither to taxpayers, who provide much of their funding, nor to their own tenants.
A UKIP investigation into the largest 50 housing associations uncovered a catalogue of failures. They are not building as many homes as private developers, the homes they do build cost more to put up, and they are failing to tackle anti-social behaviour. Average salaries for chief executives reach 51 times their tenants’ rent: one CEO is paid three times as much as the Prime Minister.
Housing associations manage 60 per cent of the socially rented sector and have received £23 billion of Government funding in the past 14 years, but UKIP is not convinced they are benefiting either tenants or the taxpayer. We will launch a review into their operation.”

All power to Neil’s elbow for exposing mediocre Housing Association accommodation for sky high rents, but the conditions that Neil has filmed here aren’t half as bad as some of the conditions that I witnessed when I lived around Bangor and Caernarfon until very recently. The Daily Post has run constant exposes of the dreadful state of houses ‘managed’ by CCG, the ‘social landlord’ that took the housing stock over from Gwynedd County Council a few years ago. The people I knew in the worst conditions however were people on low incomes renting from private landlords or indeed people who had managed to buy their own houses previously and were now struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Many of the people that I knew in this category were mental health clients who were legally entitled to social housing – but if those ‘clients’ had dared ever make a complaint against the ‘services’, they would be told in no uncertain terms that there was no way that housing could be found for them. (Mind you, some of those ‘clients’ purposefully did not ask for help with housing because they saw where other people in their position were being housed – please see my comments below for examples of vulnerable people being housed next to violent offenders).
In my own case, when I was doing my PhD and on a very limited income, for a while I rented a house in Cwm-Y-Glo. It had no heating and fungi – quite big fungi as well – found the back corner of one room excellent growing conditions. The back door frame was so dodgy that the door collapsed. The landlord’s solution to this was to nail the door shut. My PhD supervisor pissed himself laughing at the irony of this – because the landlord had gone to the trouble of fitting a fire alarm. But then barricading me in should it go off… Although my supervisor found this entertaining it was at this point that he offered to lend me money for rent in advance to enable me to find somewhere decent to live. He and his wife kept expressing horror at the conditions that I was living in but I was by no means alone. The reason that I was living in such a dump was that on my bursary all I had was a choice of similar such dumps. Things must be even worse now because when I spent Christmas at my former PhD supervisor’s house last year, one of the other guests was a young Romanian student from Bangor University who was living in a tent on Bangor mountain. Students have always traditionally slummed it, but a tent really is pushing the boat out. Bangor University do of course have some very, very nice halls of residence now – but only a minority of students can afford them. Then there’s the university approved accommodation list, with houses that have been passed and registered – at a price of course. Then there’s the hovels where the students who don’t have affluent parents to bail them out live. And now it seems there’s the tents on Bangor mountain for those who can’t afford the hovels. But as my comment further below indicates, I still encountered problems with the private rented sector even when I hit the big time after my PhD and I actually had a salary to live on. This chaos – that exists in rural Wales as well as places like London – is the natural result of successive governments putting absolutely no thought at all into housing policy. And now we’re being asked to blame the baby boomers for the housing crisis – as though they’re selfishly sitting in all the houses refusing to move out.

your story there reminds me of a situation about 40 years ago when a mate was living in a council house in Merthyr where the damp was so bad he named it “mushroom villa” and received a bollocking from the council. Nothing seems to change much, except for those on the inside track..

Housing associations are out of control, spending large amounts of public funding, and in Wales they tend to be stuffed with overpaid Labour Party supporters.

The ONS recommended that HAs be reclassified as public bodies which would, among other things, make them more open to public scrutiny. For example, covered by the FoI legislation. Understandably, this terrifies them.

To help them avoid this fate their friends in the ‘Welsh’ Government have been carrying out a review, which is guaranteed to conclude that housing associations are doing a wonderful job and there’s no need to change anything. How can I say this?

First, the review is being conducted by the Public Accounts Committee. Sitting on that Committee is Neil McEvoy. I provided Neil with some damning evidence on our out of control housing associations . . . then came his remarkable suspension from the Assembly for that ludicrous ‘bullying’ charge.

Second, someone with whom I have been co-operating for a few years is Wynne Jones of Cardigan. Wynne has amassed a mountain of evidence of ‘irregularities’ in the workings of his local housing associations. When he tried to get more information recently from the Assembly, about the work of the PAC, he was told “I am writing to advise that the evidence session the Public Accounts Committee held with the Welsh Government on 8 May was in private and a transcript and recording will not be available.”

This is how Wales is run. ‘Welsh’ Labour is bending rules, telling lies, defying the ONS, in order to protect the waste and corruption that is housing associations in Wales. But we’ll never know about it because – as I’ve explained in this post – the media won’t report it.

Jac, There are also shenanigans in the North Wales Housing Association. I know a woman with learning disabilities and mental health problems who also has a long term condition gradually causing her to lose her sight who lives in a NWHA flat. Because of her disabilities the council pays an enhanced rent for her, which is supposed to cover an element of ‘support’ from a ‘housing support officer’. This woman was literally being terrorised by a man in the flat above her. She told people that he was aggressive, that he was following her and looking into her window. This was dismissed as her being ‘paranoid’. She tried to report the harassment to the ‘support’ officer. He literally laughed in her face. Her friends, now very concerned about her as she was obviously living in fear, suggested that she put in for a transfer to another flat elsewhere. The ‘support’ officer wouldn’t give her the appropriate documentation let alone help her complete it. Some months after all this, there was a drugs raid on her block of flats – the neighbour whom she had been so fearful of was a big time heroin dealer from Liverpool.

Another anecdote re the NWHA. I knew someone who because of their mental health difficulties became homeless and ended up in the homeless hostel in Bangor some years ago. This person found another one of the residents dead in bed from an overdose of illegal drugs. He had acquired the drugs which killed him from hostel staff. Upon discovering the body, this young woman was taken to the Hergest Unit at Ysbyty Gwynedd, sectioned, had all her clothes taken away and never returned and was clothed in one of those forensic white boiler suits. She did not get out of that Unit until that young man had been buried and ‘investigations’ into his death were complete. She was never asked to provide a statement. The man on duty when she discovered the body who called the ‘services’ who sectioned her later became Chief Exec of the NWHA. I can tell this story now because this lady has left Gwynedd and there can’t be any comeback for her. However before she moved away, she was housed in a NWHA flat in Caernarfon. Again, a neighbour was a drug dealer – this neighbour worked for CAIS the anti-drugs Third Sector organisation that receives millions from the Welsh Gov’t to combat substance abuse. The lady also had another neighbour who hung himself – a young man who was in the ‘care’ of the local mental health team. Another neighbour was regularly visited by his probation officer who was having a sexual relationship with him (no joke – I was visiting my friend and heard the action coming from the neighbouring flat myself) and was then arrested by the North Wales Police for an alleged assault when she complained about an excessively noisy neighbour. No charges were ever brought against her. She had also previously won a ‘good neighbour’ award, so there were no grounds to believe that she was the aggressor – the person who made the allegation was however known to the police.

One more anecdote. Some years ago I was paying a lot of money to rent a really nice place in Llandwrog. It was lovely but after a few months there was a serious problem with the roof and water was coming in to both the bedroom and the shower, dripping through electrical fittings. The letting agent was utterly uninterested and just would not do a thing, telling me that it was the responsibility of the owner of the house. I contacted the owner who told me that it was the letting agents responsibility. This went on for weeks, while I paid full rent and got drenched. It was very obvious that no-one was going to fix the roof so I moved out. The owners of the house were a couple who were using it as a buy to let investment. One of them was a manager with the big housing association over in Clwyd (Clwyd and Alyn or something?) She must have known that all this was unlawful but she could not give a toss.

I also know that a ‘warden’ employed by the NWHA for some ‘sheltered flats’ in Llangefni had been previously sacked from a job as a doctor’s receptionist for stealing, then sacked from another job as a ‘warden’ in a residential home for the theft of £300 from the owner of the home. The last I heard the folk in the sheltered flats at Llangefni were complaining to the NWHA about her bullying vulnerable tenants…

The sector is rife with abuse. The housing associations seem to have a big scam going on with CAIS – again and again I am told that CAIS are housing people with histories of very violent offending or drug dealing next to profoundly vulnerable people. I understand that people do need to be rehabilitated and live somewhere, but isn’t that what risk assessments are supposed to be all about? But then a number of people staffing those housing associations are former staff from the North Wales Hospital Denbigh who were not known for their good practice. And the Chair of CAIS is one Dr Dafydd Alun Jones, former psychiatrist from the North Wales Hospital, not known for his good practice either.

As far as I can see, a lot of people concerned with the housing associations have their noses deep in a number of troughs, although some of them have left previous jobs in the ‘care’ sector under a very big cloud.

A typical example of Housing Associations not fulfilling their remit to provide decent affordable housing can be seen in RCT. They prefer to do profitable new-builds down by the M4 rather than further up the valley in the communities that need them. A site became available in the Rhondda, the old Pentre barracks.

It was owned, has traditionally been used for training of reserved forces, and was home to Rhondda Sea Cadets. When the MoD wanted to dispose of the site due to integrating reserves training into regular sites, many ‘old barracks’ throughout the United Kingdom, were sold off. In the deal was ‘preference to housing need’.

The site went to auction and sold to a private buyer with a guide price for £25,000. At the time, Chris Bryant MP (Rhondda Labour) launched a local campaign to have the site donated to the Sea Cadets. A substantial sum was donated to the cadets by the Rhondda Trust.

The Rhondda Trust was set up during the Burberry Factory closure campaign, a bribe to the community of a few hundred thousand pounds annually. Chris Bryant, who is the main trustee, negotiated it. He knew, in advance, that the Pentre barracks site could not just be ‘donated’ as he got this in a statement from the Under-Secretary of State.

Priority goes to social housing, but no bids were made from the Trivallis (formally RCT Homes).

The Pentre site was sold to a private developer, and now the MoD social clauses have expired, the site is up for sale again, wholly within the private sector. The Sea Cadets gave been evicted. Meanwhile, Trivallis are building posh estates down Llantrisant way, to generate profits from Cardiff overspill, while the families in real need languish on the social housing list in Rhondda, and the kids in Cadets, now evicted, have to use the school playing fields.

The food bank nurse highlights the SNP’s dilemma dealing with main stream media. It was an ambush and it worked very well, BBC Scotland got its SNP BAD story, as well as horrible cybernats bullying the poor nurse extra and it even snared QC whose also an SNP MP who had to apologize, extending the faux outrage further.

So while the BBC bias was on show along with the slavering rabidness of unionists and further highlighting Labour’s uselessness, it also showed the blind spot of the SNP’s leadership in trusting the BBC to be fair. Plaid Cymru does the same – why the BBC are no friends of us or the Scots?

As for the Labour Party and coalitions, especially in the Valleys they’d do deals with ISIS if it meant more votes and sticking it to the ‘nats’ they’re as backward and reactionary as anything the Scots have.

That’s why I argue that anyone thinking of a ‘progressive alliance’ that includes Labour must have their head up their arse. The priority in Wales must be to do what the SNP has done in Scotland and destroy Labour. Give Welsh voters the choice between Independence and permanent Tory rule. Labour just muddies the water and maintains the Union, but our masters know that, and that’s why they’ll keep breathing life into the Labour corpse.

Whilst it’s relatively quiet here, an I go off on a bit of a tangent? After all it is election time!

Did you see the Corbyn/ May debate in front of an audience. and then being interviewed (if you can call it an interview) with that elitist leaning, up his own arse Paxman. That guy epitomises everything that’s wrong and annoying about the bigoted and snobby Brit media (I also genuinely think he’s gone nuts – the acting role has taken over the actor).

Anyway, what are your views on what you saw? I have a gut feeling that Corbyn is in the ascendancy, and I’m not disappointed. I believe Corbyn is fair, principled and genuine. Life might be easier for us if we had a proper Nationalist party in power here and a Corbyn led Labour party in control in the colonial city. I believe we Nationalists could do something with him. Sinn Féin could in the past, and the SNP probably could now, because he is fair, of that I have no doubt.

Quite agree that Corbyn is fair, principled and genuine Big Gee, although I worry about some of the dipsticks around him such as Diane Abbott and Emily Thornberry. I maintain that the current problems in the Labour Party stem from Blair. The party is choc full of the Chukas, the Eds, the Yvettes who are self-interested shites who literally colonised it in the Blair/Brown years. They have no-ones interests but their own at heart and the sooner they join the dreadful Tristram and leave the better. But they have caused a massive problem in that huge swathes of the Parliamentary party do not represent the party membership. Tristram went because he was capable of getting another high profile job, but who would have the others? I fear that they will stay there and continue to cause havoc in the desperate hope of a Cabinet position in a future right of centre Govt – because that’s all they ever wanted, they have no interest at all in being constituency MPs working for mainstream people, they all wanted to be a Cabinet Minister. Their arrogance and sense of entitlement became quite obvious before the last election when they deluded themselves that Miliband was going to win – they were openly discussing who was going to be Home Secretary (Yvette!), who was going to be Chancellor (Ed!) BEFORE the election. The one thing that had never occurred to them was that no-one would vote for the self-serving tossers. And now they blame it all on Corbyn and maintain that he doesn’t know how to win an election – those folk who have never won an election themselves. (Of course the tosspot who organised their ‘campaign’, Spencer Livermore, who no-one has ever heard of was elevated to the Lords, quite unbelievable.) Their view of the rest of humanity was epitomised years ago when the twat Chuka sent out that notorious message on social media when he was having a knees up in a nightclub that there was only D list people in there. They are utterly vile and they are the reason that people walked away from the Labour Party – but there’s an awful lot of them in there and they will continue to throw hand-grenades into the arena. And dear old Alistair Campbell and John McTernan, Blair’s enforcers, haven’t gone away either, they’re mouthing off in the media all the time and leaning on people all over the place…

I couldn’t agree more with you drsallybaker – you’ve hit the nail on it’s head, and put your finger squarely on the problem. At present it’s a poisoned well. The parliamentary Labour Party is stuffed full of pink Tory leftovers from the Blair/ Brown era, who are so vile, I doubt if they’d even be accepted by the true Tories, who are of the same ilke!

Strange election hustings in the Gower constituency last night. We had the Labour candidate, also claiming that she “nearly had to rely on food banks because of cuts”

Thing is, our Tonia, works as a teacher, the departmental head no less, at Ysgol Bryngwyn, Dafen, Llanelli.

Education is devolved, and it’s the Labour Party who would be responsible for not paying enough and force the poor Tonia to access food banks. Of course, being the head of modern languages she was responsible for the twinning of Ysgol Bryngwyn, with Agen, France in 2014. I am told extensive cuisine was consumed by all, with free champagne.

Plump Tonia is also a Welsh Womens Rugby coach and is sponsored by United Colours of Benneton. She was the Labour candidate for Llanelli Rural Council claiming to live in the Penbre/Porth Tywyn ward, and failed to get elected. Although now she claims to be a native and living in Gorseinon.

Why is it that the spoilt elite of Labour champagne socialists keep crying poverty and food banks, when the reality they are living a lifestyle most people in Wales can only envy? Fake claims from these champagne socialists also demeans the people who really do have to rely on charity.

I’m Richard Youle, a journalist who is referred to in the JENNY LEE CLARKE section of the Lying for the Union blog above dated May 25, 2017.
As I’ve explained to the author, I certainly didn’t ‘lose interest’ in the matter, and published a story on May 24 confirming that Jenny Lee Clarke had been released from police bail.
Here is the web link https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/ex-swansea-mp-office-manager-13080072
It took slightly longer to publish than expected, simply because I had to check the information I’d received from Ms Lee Clarke with South Wales Police, and the relevant officer was on holiday.
Nothing sinister, nothing unusual. Just fact-checking.